The Historic Unfulfilled Promise

Howard Zinn's life and work are the stuff of legend. His People's History of the United States has sold over two million copies and has altered how we see and teach history. A hero in word and deed, Zinn's views on freedom, fairness, history, democracy, and our own human potential are educational and transformative. In few places is the genius of his voice more crystallized and accessible than in the dozens of articles he penned for The Progressive magazine from 1980 to 2009, offered together here in book form for the first time. Whether critiquing the Barack Obama White House, the sorry state of US government and politics, the tragic futility of US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the plight of working people in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful, Zinn's historical clarity, unflappable optimism, and unshakable questions reverberate throughout The Historic Unfulfilled Promise: "Have our political leaders gone mad?" "What kind of country do we want to live in?" "What is national security?" "Do we have a right to occupy a country when the people of that country obviously do not want us there?" "Is not war itself terrorism?" "Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own?" "Has the will of the people been followed?" The Historic Unfulfilled Promise is a genuine work of conscience, rich in ideas, charged with energy; an invaluable introduction for the uninitiated and a must-have for Zinn's fans.
"This posthumous collection of Zinn’s passionate, iconoclastic, and wryly humorous articles from the Progressive spans 30 years from 1980 to 2010 though most are of 21st-century vintage. Zinn argues repeatedly for an alternative to war, totalitarianism, and redistribution of resources and energy away from the military and “toward ideals of egalitarianism, community, and self-determination...which have been the historic, unfulfilled promise of the word democracy"